


Sea and Sand

by Mashugina



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:09:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mashugina/pseuds/Mashugina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikasa Ackerman, the last airbender in the kingdom of Sina, is left homeless and orphaned by a brutal attack on Shiganshina by the rival earthbenders of the kingdom of Auruo, breaking the barriers that kept the Titans at bay and leaving the people of Shinganshina to be devoured. Together with her friends Eren Jaeger and Armin Arlelt, she must find safety and a way to stop the Titans once and for all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea and Sand

My name is Mikasa Ackerman. I am here to write my story, for as the only airbender sworn to the service of the King, it must have some historical merit. No doubt there are others more qualified than me to tell the tale of how a fractured kingdom was reunited and the dead were put back to their rest, but I have been assigned this task, and as in all things, I shall perform to the best of my ability.

Before I can tell you my story, I must first tell you of where I live and the people therein. I grew up in an isolated corner of the Earth Kingdom, to the Northeast and unmarked on most maps, despite its large size. It is bordered on two sides by an angry sea, full of spirits, both beneficiary and malevolent, and on two more by a thick forest that covers almost a quarter of the continent. It is known as the Ghost Forest. Spirits and ghosts are common here, and we have only legends to tell us why. The most prominent myth is that a long ago Avatar saw the corruption and evil residing in our land and so raised the dead to punish us, and to prevent us from leaving our prison. Regardless, we have no Avatar to protect us from the spirits, or the Titans.

For the first nine years of my life, my family and I relied on old farmers methods of keeping them both at bay. Firstly, around our entire district of less than one hundred peasants, was a three foot high stone wall, covered in runes and incantations meant to keep them at bay. It was a communal duty to keep it up, and not even the lowest of drunkards would neglect that. Then, there was the shunning of the night, staying inside our own homes and barns when the sun dipped below the horizon and shivering as we heard the strange noises and heavy footsteps outside.

The wall of inscribed stone was replicated when I moved to the port city of Shiganshina, but it was fifty meters tall and required a team of specially trained earthbenders to keep the prayers within intact. Small spirits still slipped through. I remember sneaking out to see the stars, for they were a rare and beautiful sight, and running straight into a shadow spirit that held me close with its stinking, spindly fingers as Eren screamed and threw blast after blast of flame at it. We were rescued by Hannes, and spent the next week sulking in the cellar and nursing our bruises. Carla was a strong woman when angered.

The Sea nomads keep their stilt homes safe by inscribing the wood and the coral they sit on, the few ships that go out to sea are covered in iron inscriptions, travelers and the army use painted wooden blocks and sentries, and I do not know what methods the nomads of the massive wilds of Daupner use to protect themselves. I am sure you have grown tired of my explanations, but I must reinforce it to you, over and over again, just how vital it was that we never come into contact with the spirits, and especially never the Titans.

Our land is sick. Gentle spirits turn cruel, darkness seeping into every pore of their being. The souls of the dead rise as twisted, filthy caricatures of human beings, some of them fifteen meters tall and all of them lusting for human flesh. These are the Titans. These are just one of the enemies that invaded Shiganshina that day six years ago.

Despite our mutual enemies, humanity did not co-operate. The history records indicate that there were as many as five kings, once, but back then there were only two. The King of Sina and the king of Auruo. We were not defined by our bending, though firebenders were far more plentiful in Auruo, but by our place on the land and the borders drawn on our maps. In any case, Shiganshina and myself were on Sina’s side of the map, and Auruo had been faltering for years now.

Shiganshina was a wealthy port city that held the monopoly on the fruits of the sea and surrounding countryside. It was beautiful, and isolated. Neither Eren nor Armin seemed to appreciate its beauty though, as they were always dreaming of the world beyond the walls. On two sides, it was bordered by the sea, on one, by a constantly patrolled and sealed off highway surrounded by fields and small villages, on the other, by the ghost forest.

To strike at us would have dealt a devastating blow to the war effort and the economy, and driven Sina back to beyond the Rose river. Yet, we were confident that it could never happen, that Auruo could never muster up enough men to attack us directly or risk going through the forest. As it turned out, it did not need a large number of men to bring the city down. As the day drew to an end and the soldiers were changing shifts, twenty earthbenders emerged from the ground of the forest. They were nobles and peasants and slaves, elders and children, willing and unwilling, all powerful, all selected for this suicide mission by the king of Auruo himself.

Two of them scaled the walls, and began taking out the soldiers on top of the wall. Two of them began to make the earth tremble and quake, attracting Titans and terrifying the people inside. The rest of them attacked the wall, sending chunks of debris flying to crush those unfortunate enough to live near the outskirts. Eren, Armin and I were unable to do anything but watch. We were children. We were afraid.

By the time they’d all either died or fled, a twenty meter tall hole in the wall had been made, and the Titans were entering. Armin was sensible, as always, and fled to the docks, where his parents would be. Eren and I needed to find Carla, Erens mother. We ran past the tide of fleeing people, and we found our home crushed, Carla crushed beneath it. She told us to flee. We refused, and began to lift the beam from her crushed legs. The Titan appeared at the end of the street, huge and slow and grinning grotesquely as it lumbered towards us. She begged Eren to run. He refused and yelled as I tried to create a gust of wind powerful enough the help me lift the beam. I hated myself for neglecting my airbending skills. She begged me to run, to take Eren with me. I called her mother for the first and last time, and refused. The Titan was only meters away now, and Carla yelled to someone behind us to take us and run. The soldier, Hannes, refused and started to run towards the Titan.

I was convinced, in that moment, that we would be saved. Then he faltered. Then he stopped.

Then he ran back and grabbed us both, causing the beam to fall back on Carla with a sick crunching noise, and he ran. Carla wept with joy, but there was fear there as well and Eren screamed at Hannes to stop. The Titan swung aside the beam like it was a childrens toy and picked Carla’s broken body up. I will remember the red of her blood as it spilled from her body to adorn the Titans face for the rest of my life.

Hannes placed us on a boat, where Armin tearfully embraced us, and asked us where our mother was. We did not answer him. He figured it out. We spent three days on that crowded, filthy ship, before the captain declared he could not feed or transport all of us and dumped those without money on an abandoned pier that lead to an abandoned town. Armin’s father only had enough for two. He chose his wife, and so my story begins, on an old rotting pier with my two best friends alone and forsaken as refugees swarmed around us.

**Author's Note:**

> NOTES: The first person pov is going to be used in the prologue only.


End file.
